When I started teaching myself how to play the guitar and write songs, I was eighteen years old. Not incredibly young, not incredibly old. I didn't have a plan of what to do with the music I had begun to make.

Now, fifteen years since my humble beginnings of strumming one chord furtively in my bedroom, I am the proud owner of one bona fide music career. It can be a perplexing navigation, trying to figure out how to turn something you love into something other people can love, and especially hard to figure out how to make a living from it.

What I have to offer you here is a brief history of my "band" and a few lessons I learned along the way.